Companion Love
by luluhrh
Summary: The Doctor isn't sure if he can't remember, or if he just doesn't want to./In which the Doctor tries to remember how it felt to love Rose Tyler. Doctor/Rose, mostly Eleven/Rose but with memories of Nine/Rose and Ten/Rose and maybe a hint of WarDoctor/Rose, but they're all the same man so what does it matter? Eleven/River mention. Much sadness and angst. Enjoy!
**Okay. I cannot be the only person to ship Rose with EVERY DOCTOR EVER BECAUSE THEY ARE MADE FOR EACH OTHER**

 **No seriously Rose is the Bad Wolf she created herself for the Doctor** ** _I'm not even kidding when I say she was made for him_**

 ** _By herself_**

 ** _What is this paradox_**

 ***UNIVERSE IMPLODES/EXPLODES/DISAPPEARS ALL AT ONCE***

 **...**

 **Okay, so the universe didn't do that. It was fine. Self-fulfilling paradoxes are the shit.**

 **ANYWAY I ship Doctor/Rose with every fiber of my** ** _Doctor Who_** **-oriented being. But Rose is gone. *cries* She's not coming back. *cries more***

 **But that's not my issue. What's done is done. My issue is that THE ELEVENTH DOCTOR DOES NOT SEEM TO CARE.**

 **Now, I have written a few fics that have Eleven running into Rose and being sad because** ** _no ROse I love you and you have to know please know I will always love you_** **but looking at the canon, as soon as the Doctor regenerates, he's totally fine about how he just wished her a happy new year before she ever met him and will now never see her ever again.**

 **Personally, I think that's total shit. There's no way he's fine!** ** _HE LOVES HER AND HE JUST SAW HER FOR THE LAST TIME WTF CRY YOU DUMBASS_**

 **But then I recall Rose appearing in "Let's Kill Hitler" as the voice interface of the TARDIS and the Doctor saying that the hologram gave him guilt and nothing else. I remember how in "The Wedding of River Song" the Doctor mentions Rose and Jack like he's just reciting old excuses, like he's not thinking about what they mean to him and is only thinking of how to escape his own death. I remember how Bad Wolf in the "The Day of the Doctor" described Eleven as "the man who forgets."**

 **I then developed this hypothesis: Eleven knows who Rose is. He knows how she looks and how she smiles. He feels guilty for leaving her behind and for hurting her. He knows that he loved her. He's just forgotten how it _felt_ to love Rose Tyler.**

 **... *curls into fetal position on the floor* This pain is so real.**

 **Okay. This story is Eleven reflecting on how he just automatically felt the need to return to Rose and trying to figure out what his love for her felt like by comparing it to how he's felt towards his other, more recent companions.**

 **I'd love to say that I'm sorry... but I'm really not.**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

 _"I could help Rose Tyler with her homework!"_

"Why did I say that?" he asks himself when all is quiet and River is safe. "Why do that? Why help Rose with her homework?"

 _Rose,_ something in him says. _Always Rose. We always run to Rose._

Pinstripes and Big-ears are in the back of his mind, nodding emphatically. _Always to Rose before anyone else._

The Doctor scoffs. "Please. What does that mean?"

 _We loved her,_ Big-ears insists.

 _We never said, but we did,_ Pinstripes adds. _We do._

"No, we love River," the Doctor points out. "We haven't loved Rose since New Year's 2005."

Every one of his past incarnations shakes their head. _Not the same. Forever._

"Not the same?" the Doctor wonders, ignoring the words his past selves whisper because _no not now not yet hold it back_. "That's love, though. What we feel for River, it's love. If that's not what it felt like, what was it?"

He mentally starts cataloging how he's loved them- every one, every companion since the Time War- and trying to see if those kinds of love feel familiar when applied to a pink-and-yellow human.

He loves Amy because Amy is Amy. She's the girl who waited for twelve years, who isn't afraid of anything except for a crack in her wall and not being ready to marry the man she loves. She is smart and sassy and Scottish and ginger _always wanted to be ginger she's a little bit like Donna-_

Walls up. Not letting that in. Not again.

Moving on.

He loves Rory, he supposes, because Rory is brilliant in his own odd way, but mostly because Amy loves Rory and if Amy loves him he's worthy of love. Amy has always shown remarkable taste. Except with him. He, himself, is the one thing she was wrong about.

But Rory, Rory's fantastic- brilliant- wonderful. Another wonderful Pond.

He loves River. He does. She knows him so well, and she'll keep on knowing him better until he no longer knows her- And she's Amy and Rory's daughter. He has to protect her and be there for her. River's strong, though. She doesn't need his protection, but he gives it anyway. She will be there- until she isn't.

He knows where she's going. He wishes he didn't.

But how does any of it compare?

With Amy, it's sibling love, or the love between friends, the love of companionship. And yes, it does seem to fit with Rose, but only a little. When he tries to put this feeling next to her, that Valiant Child, with her bleached hair and big teeth and dark eyes, it works, but there's still something missing. Always something...

With Rory, it's friendly and perhaps brotherly, but he knows that Rory sometimes still wonders if there was anything between him and Amy (which there wasn't, because he always thought of her as little Amelia who was _seven years old_ and they're all children to him, but that's not okay). Brotherly love doesn't work.

With River, it's raw attraction and the need to save her because he can never repay her for saving him. She's the daughter of his best friends, and maybe he feels like he _needs_ to love her, but it's more than that. She understands him. She flirts with him. She's... River. And River is beautiful and brilliant and _he loves River_.

 _So was Rose,_ his inner voice whispers. _We loved/love Rose._ _But she was more that that, too._

And the Doctor, for all his lives, cannot figure out what that "more" is. There is companionship, and understanding, and attraction, and admiration. What else does he need in order to remember?

 _There's me,_ a voice within him whispers, but it's not him, none of him.

Too much mascara and deep brown eyes and a tongue-in-teeth smile. _There's me._

 _Completes us,_ past hims murmur.

 _Mulder and Scully, Shiver and Shake, the Oncoming Storm and the Bad Wolf. The stuff of legend,_ Pinstripes says, and it seems louder, like that man is pushing towards the surface. Big-ears is close behind, and between the two of them, they drag warmth and hope and promises to his hearts.

"A promise," the Doctor says softly.

 _"How long are you going to stay with me?"_

 _"Forever."_

A broken promise.

It hits him over the head like a battering ram to the temple- _this love is so much more than anything else because she said forever and she meant it and she would have given it and I pushed it all away I gave it all away_ \- and he knows, he remembers _why_.

He loved her because she would not sacrifice the universe for him ( _not like River, foolish young River who wanted to save her love_ ), but she would sacrifice _herself_.

* * *

He pushes it back down, because he doesn't want to know.

* * *

There's three hims, and the universe has not exploded... yet.

And there's Rose, standing in the corner, whispering words that he cannot hear, and it's strange, because he hasn't hallucinated about her in centuries.

And then, as he carves their salvation, right after a spat with his other selves, he hears Rose-not-Rose whispers, "The man who forgets."

He does not stop carving, because he can't turn to her, he can't look back now, just a hallucination whispering words he knows to be true. He's always forgetting. So old he's forgotten if he's lying about his age.

 _Rule # 1: The Doctor lies._

It's funny, because seeing Pinstripes in the room, the man from the time after real Rose is gone, after Martha and Donna have been left behind, he remembers the old Rule # 1. _Don't wander off._

He wonders when that changed.

But then Granddad is asking a question, and he has to answer, and he tries to forget about the one person in the room who is just a figment of his imagination. Counted? No, no, never counted. So old, too old. Four hundred years past it all now.

But skinny Sandshoes, handsome Pinstripes, he counted. He is so much like Big-Ears, Big-Nose, Big-Everything, that heart-on-your-sleeve, devil-may-care attitude that he hides behind crumbling walls as he shows the rage hidden underneath, bubbling just under the surface. _2.47 billion,_ he says. _400 years, is that all it takes?_ he spits out, hatred burning in his eyes, because there is no one in the universe who hates him more than he himself does.

The warrior doesn't know them. He is glad, because he doesn't want him to know. He doesn't know this warrior either. He doesn't know Sandshoes. They are different people, and he's a new man. Or an old man. A separate man.

 _They're you,_ someone whispers, and it's a soft, feminine voice, and he wants to spin around and look at her, because she's there, the Rose hallucination. He wants to see her in those strange ripped clothes, her big brown eyes and wide mouth framed by locks of bleached blonde. Wild and vital and so far away from him yet right there, out of the corner of his eye...

He doesn't look. He can't- it hurts too much.

It shouldn't. Hurt, that is. He should have let it go, should have gotten over it, should have forgotten by now. _The man who forgets._

Maybe it's a misnomer. It seems that these days, he remembers far too much.

* * *

 _Oh Bad Wolf girl, I could kiss you!_

Granddad can see Rose. Rose-not-Rose, but she _is_ , isn't she? He's not the only one who sees.

Sandshoes looks up in shock and wonder and sadness and _hope_ , and this one, pinstripes and spiky hair, he'd forgotten about hope, hadn't he? He'd given up on it. Seeing it in those eyes is strange and different from the outside, but it's beautiful. It's also so, so sad.

He, himself, with his bowtie and his floppy hair- he does not react. He knows now, knows he is not the only one to see... but he can't look. He won't let himself be sucked into that, not now, not when he was _this close_ to- to- something. Acceptance? Moving on?

He was close to nothing. He had been ignoring it for too long.

But not now. It can't be dealt with now. Rose Tyler has waited this long in the recesses of his mind. She can wait a little longer.

* * *

Later, after all is said and done, the Doctor knows he's forgetting something. Something has been buried underneath knowledge- _Gallifrey Falls No More_ \- and he can't, for all his lives, remember what it is.

 _Blonde hair, brown eyes, pink sweater, wide smile-_

Not for all his lives.

* * *

 **I was reading over this because it's been sitting on my computer for over a month and I got chills and nearly cried wtf Lulu stop**

 **Okay I've been terrible about everything but I'll try to get some more stuff up, yeah? I'll try to do that. And stop being terrible at life. And updating.**

 **(I've also kind of been in the midst of moving and also dealing with my romantic feelings for my best friend like the freaking rom-com cliche I am so there was that)**

 **ANYWAY!**

 **RFF and let me know what you thought! Did I make anybody cry? (aside from myself)**

 **Love ya (I promise [I'll try not to break it])! Lulu**


End file.
